


Sweet dreams are made of this

by Elisexyz



Series: 25 days of Swanfire fic-mas [5]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Emma and Neal raise Henry, F/M, Fluff, Tallahassee AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16912311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Emma has a problem. Neal tries to be a good, supportive husband about it (with pretty decent results, if he can say so himself).





	Sweet dreams are made of this

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Baking" prompt in the [ "25 days of fic-mas" challenge on Tumblr](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com/tagged/25-days-of-fic-mas/chrono). This _could_ have been up yesterday, except I was stuck at like 500 words of it, and then I had to study for my upcoming exam, so I ended up going back to it around ten pm... and somehow it turned into almost 2k words of domestic fluff. How am I even surprised by myself anymore.  
>  PS: I proof-read this literally five minutes after wrapping up my studying session of the day, so there's an even higher chance than usual of typos in here. Forgive me, I'll read it again tomorrow, when my brain isn't fried.

“—Neal? Are you even alive?”

He blinks, glancing at the alarm clock on the bedside table as soon as he can get his eyes to focus: it’s six am. And Emma is obviously very much awake, sitting on the bed and trying to get his attention. She _doesn’t_ look like she just rolled out of bed.

“…yeah?” he offers, although considering what time it is he isn’t too sure.

Emma presses her lips together, shifting a bit on her seat. “I screwed up,” she announces, grimly. “I’m a filthy liar and now I’m _screwed_.”

It’s too early for cryptic answers. Way, way too early.

But Emma seems distressed, which is enough to make him focus a little better. “Exactly what did you lie about at six in the morning?” he asks, trying to make light of whatever it is that’s bothering her.

She shoots him a brief, unamused look. “I told Janet I’d bring the cake,” she says, as if it were self-explanatory.

Neal tries to connect the only three or four braincells awake in his head, but the most he gathers is that Janet is their neighbour, she invited them over for Christmas, and she’s a mother of three, so she can be pretty intimidating. That’s about it.

“So?” he finally prompts, when it’s clear that he won’t get it on his own.

“ _So_ I can’t bake to save my _life_ ,” Emma announces, raising her voice a little.

He frowns. “I distinctly remember eating cakes over the years.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I _bought_ them. You are just too used to living on Tacos and caned shit to notice the _difference_.”

Yeah, alright, that’s a good point. There’s no abundance of homemade cakes on the streets, even less so back where he comes from, or in Neverland.

“Okay,” he says, slowly. “So why did you agree to it?”

Emma isn’t exactly _shy_ , why would she offer to bake a cake if she doesn’t even know where to start?

She bits her bottom lip, her eyes darting away for a few seconds before she answers. “She _assumed_ I could bake,” she says, defensively. “She’s the perfect housewife and supermom, there’s _no way_ I’m telling her I can’t even come up with a decent cake.”

Ah. That makes sense. Neither of them is particularly well-adjusted when it comes to family history – and a bunch of other things, actually –, and she’s had quite a few problems adjusting to the idea that she’s a mom and she’s doing just fine. The fact that he, unlike her, works from home and therefore spends the most time with Henry doesn’t help matters.

“You don’t need to bake to be a good mom, you know that,” he says, gently, reaching for her hand in support.

She squeezes back, but she snorts. “Yeah, easy for you to say, you are not the one who gets all the side-eyeing when people find out that I’m a working mother.” She pauses, and he resists the urge to engulfing her in a hug. He hates stupid people. “Look, I _have_ to make this damn cake, and it has to be decent. It’s an all hands on deck kind of situation.”

At six in the morning. Of course.

“Alright,” he sighs, pushing himself up. “I can try to help. But, as you said, I wouldn’t know a homemade cake if it hit me in the face, so—” He trials off, shrugging briefly.

Emma doesn’t seem to care that he is as clueless as she is, because she smiles. “Thanks, let’s go, come on,” she says, quickly, grabbing his arms to pull him up.

He’s going to need a coffee.

 

It doesn’t go half as bad as it could have. Which is _not_ to say that it went well.

 

The first attempt goes rather poorly: they forget the damn baking powder, so they end up with a slightly overcooked cake that hasn’t risen as it should have. It doesn’t taste _that_ bad, but of course it’s not exactly presentable.

“Buying one’s still an option,” Neal points out, giving a deliberately _long_ look at the messy kitchen: they have used half the tools they own, there’s chocolate _everywhere_ , including on Emma’s face, and the mere thought of starting over makes him want to crawl back to bed.

Emma, of course, disagrees.

“She’d notice,” she states, sighing heavily. There’s a second there when she looks pretty damn discouraged herself, but that woman could survive on stubbornness alone if need be, so she straightens up and she starts throwing everything in the sink. “Come on, let’s wash all this and start over.”

What a wonderful perspective.

 

The second attempt crashes and burns. Literally. In their defence, they _tried:_ both of them were expecting to set the kitchen on fire, so they made sure to take the cake out the _minute_ they were supposed to, especially considering that they have a kid still sound asleep in his room.

“Oh, _come on_ —” Emma hisses, taking out the worryingly _black_ cake and turning up her nose at the smell. “It was _exactly_ forty minutes, am I supposed to sacrifice my firstborn to the god of cakes or something?”

“Yeah, let’s— not,” he says, quickly, trying to keep an humorous tone in spite of the chill that the thought sent down his spine. “Some people do like burnt stuff,” he adds, with a shrug.

Emma sends him an unamused look, throwing the wanna-be cake right in the trash. “We’re out of chocolate,” she announces, dropping on a chair and glaring at the oven, like _it_ was the incompetent one.

He glances at the clock. “Store’s open,” he points out. “Unless you’ve changed your mind—” he adds, but he isn’t even hoping that’s the case. It’s likely that they’ll just bake and bake and bake the whole day, until either Henry murders them out of boredom or Emma drops exhausted on the floor.

It’s not even _that_ bad, honestly, he’s had fun throughout all the parts that didn’t involve anxiously staring at the oven while waiting for it to blow up, but he’d just like to avoid having to clean everything and trying again only to end up with another unusable cake.

“Third time’s the charm,” she announces, resolutely.

He snorts, sparing a moment of affection for her stubbornness. At least the supply run will get him out of a good portion of the cleaning.

When he comes back with probably enough ingredients to make five more cakes – the cashier was definitely laughing at him –, he finds that Henry has finally woken up and that he has enthusiastically joined the mission.

“Shouldn’t you get out of your pyjamas first?” he asks, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

Henry puffs. “But there’s already chocolate on my shirt!”

“Dammit, Henry, I told you to be careful,” Emma complains, leaning forward to check. Sure enough, there’s a big-ass stain on the front of his shirt. Yeah, well, in the kid’s defence, there’s chocolate everywhere: it’s kinda difficult not to mess your clothes up.

They decide that the pyjamas are a lost cause already – Neal is _definitely_ going to argue that Emma should take care of that, he distinctly remembers doing the laundry like two days ago –, and they go back to work.

Emma gleefully informs him that they had the wrong oven temperature before, so everything should work perfectly now. Operative word there is _should_ , but hey, hope dies last.

Henry looks absolutely adorable mixing chocolate with his sleeves rolled up and his tongue out as proof of how focused he is, and Neal’s proud to notice that he didn’t even try to be sneaky and eat half of the ingredients – he did get a taste here and there, but so did Neal, before; Emma threw a spoon at him when she noticed, but it was worth it.

“Damn right I’m acing this thing,” Emma mumbles, sharing a triumphal grin with him as they triple check the recipe to make sure that they are getting this right for once.

“Backing powder,” he reminds her.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” she assures, before going to check on Henry. “Hey, this looks great, kid.”

He offers a gigantic smile, which only has the effect of showing that his teeth are all black because of the chocolate that he wasn’t supposed to eat.

Emma bites back a laugh, ruffling his hair.

Unsurprisingly, Henry doesn’t stick around until they are done: he grabs a box of cereals and runs to the living room to watch some TV, which leaves the two of them alone to get attempt number three over with.

“If this doesn’t work out, I’m killing someone,” Emma sighs, right after closing the oven.

“Remember that you love me and that you’d be _really_ sad if I died,” he grins, placing a quick kiss on her temple before dropping on the closest chair available. “We could join Henry,” he suggests, when Emma sits on the chair next to his.

“Yeah, and risk setting everything on fire?” she scoffs. “Not a chance, I’m not leaving this kitchen until that stupid cake is done.”

Yeah, he figured. Still, it was worth a try.

“I’ll fulfil my duty as Husband Of The Year and keep you company then,” he announces, with an overly dramatic sigh.

She rolls her eyes. “Chill, you just baked a cake.”

“ _Three_. Out of sheer love for you. At _six_ in the morning,” he corrects. “I think I deserve Husband Of The Year.”

She snorts, amused. “You’ll get your treat, promise.”

 

The third cake looks a bit greasy on the top, _obviously_.

Neal can clearly see the bloodlust in Emma’s eyes, so he’s quick to point out: “We have to put chocolate on it anyway. It’s fine.”

“It looks _greasy_ ,” she protests, glaring at the cake.

“A bit, but we can cover it,” he insists. “Come on, it’s the first time we’ve baked anything, I don’t think we can do better than this. It’s fine.”

She opens her mouth, clearly intending to protest again, but in the end she changes her mind. “Fine,” she sighs, resigned. “We keep this one. Hoping it doesn’t suck.”

Neal can hear angelic choirs in his head.

They _did_ it. Cake’s almost done, they’ll have an hard time messing up the last part, and honestly it doesn’t seem half-bad.

“I think it’s good,” he comments, earnestly.

“That’s because you eat pretty much anything.”

“Come _on_ , be proud of our work. It isn’t cracked, it smells good, we did okay.”

Emma contemplates the cake some more, then the frown on her face eases a little. “Yeah, okay, fine,” she finally concedes, some tension disappearing from her shoulders as she drops her arms down her sides. “We did good.”

The icing doesn’t take long, and when they are done it honestly feels like they’ve had a second baby or something. As far as he’s concerned, it might have actually taken nine months or so to bake the damn thing.

They are busy grinning at each other in mutual relief, when Neal notices the horrible state that the kitchen is in.

“I’m not cleaning a single bowl now,” Emma announces, following his eyes and immediately catching on.

“Well,” he says, clicking his tongue. “We could take a shower and watch a movie with the kid.”

“We could order take-out for lunch and clean in the afternoon,” she adds, shrugging with a perfectly innocent look on her face.

He snorts, amused. “I’m in.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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